Million-Dollar Mess Down Under Read online

  Even in Australia cockroaches can’t talk. At least, I don’t think they can. There probably are talking cockroaches somewhere in Australia since they seem to have every other weird animal on the planet. Anyway, this cockroach didn’t. And if I’m being totally honest? There wasn’t even a cockroach.

  But there should have been, because the inside of Uncle Grey’s house—our house, now, I supposed—was even more trashed than the outside. If there’d been a swarm of cockroaches, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  There was stuff everywhere.

  Boxes of smelly books and papers were piled high in teetering stacks around the living room like a mountain range. There seemed to be about twice as much furniture as anyone would ever need and almost all of it was broken in some way: the padding leaking out of a split seam here, a quivering spring waiting for some unsuspecting butt there. Behind the couch was the giant stuffed bear, but you already know about that. There were a few more stuffed animals dotted around too—a moldy old crow, a weird-looking wombat, a giant moose head with its antlers painted bright green. I’m guessing Uncle Grey wasn’t exactly what you’d call an animal lover.

  And then there were the paintings—hundreds of them—big ones, small ones, square ones, and tall ones. They were stacked and racked against the walls and furniture in rows six deep. Every inch of wall space was covered and it was clear that they were pretty much all painted by the same person.

  “Ewww,” Georgia said, peering at one of the biggest, which hung at an angle above the dusty mantelpiece. “What is that supposed to be?”

  “It’s not supposed to be anything,” I said. “It’s an abstract, just like Mom’s paintings.”

  “It stinks,” Georgia said, before losing interest and wandering off toward what sounded like the kitchen.

  I stared at the painting and suddenly forgot all about werewolves and broken furniture. The drumming of jackhammers from the freeway overhead faded away.

  Looking at the painting was like staring into deep space. A thick swirl of blue paint on a darker blue background was crisscrossed and dotted all over with splashes and marks of yellow and green and lilac. Thin trickles of paint danced crazily across the canvas, as though a drunk mouse had fallen into a can of paint and then set off home, dragging its tail behind it. For all I knew, that was exactly what had happened. This thing was a complete and total Aussie mess, an explosion in a paint factory, a peek inside a fantastically mixed-up mind.

  I loved it. Whoever had painted this was a genius. Georgia didn’t know her Picasso from her El Greco.

  I dragged a footstool over and stood on it to straighten the painting. As I did, I noticed a signature scrawled in a corner: G. Khatchadorian, 10.11.1987.

  Uncle Grey was the genius!

  I’LL COME BACK to the painting stuff later (believe me, there’s plenty more to tell) and I’ll also give you more info on 322 Lorikeet Drive (plenty more there too).

  But right now let’s deal with St. Mungo’s.

  Remember how I showed you that lousy school uniform at the start of this story? And how Mr. Ato, back in Hills Village, told us about 322 Lorikeet Drive coming with a few conditions? Well, one of those conditions was that I attend Uncle Grey’s old school, St. Mungo’s, and that uniform is what I had to wear. No St. Mungo’s = no 322 Lorikeet Drive.

  Ten minutes later, I came downstairs. Georgia and Mom both looked at me and then at each other.

  “Not. A. Word,” I said, and held up a finger.

  Mom gave Georgia one of those laser-death-ray stares and I knew she was doing a mind-meld on her NOT to laugh.

  Georgia—dressed in a TOTALLY NORMAL uniform, btw—looked like her head was going to explode with the effort of keeping a straight face. “You look … nice,” she said in a strangled voice.

  I grabbed a piece of toast and slunk out.

  “Have a good day, Rafe,” Mom called.

  I closed the door of 322 Lorikeet Drive behind me and, before I made it to the gate, I heard the muffled sound of hysterical laughter from inside the house.

  ST. MUNGO’S WAS only just around the corner from Uncle Grey’s house, so I didn’t have far to go.

  That was the only good thing about it. That and the fact that my Aussie friend Ellie wasn’t around to see my shame. I’d kind of hoped I’d be able to see Ellie, but she’d moved to New Zealand a couple of months back.

  Mom and I had gone online and checked out exactly where the school was the day before so I knew where I was going. I saw about a trillion people on the way but none of them gave me a second glance. As I approached the school, I began to see other kids dressed the same as me. Some shot me snotty looks and I heard a few of them saying stuff about me. So far it was pretty much like Hills Village Middle School.

  I rounded the corner and got my first look at St. Mungo’s.

  It was .

  It was .

  It was—

  I didn’t get to finish my thought because a kid stuck out a leg and I fell headfirst into an ornamental bush.

  When I untangled myself, I looked up to see three kids laughing at me—not with me, in case you were wondering. Definitely at me. There’s a difference.

  “You need to watch where you’re going, dork,” said a tall kid with the cleanest hair I’d ever seen. I mean, this dude’s hair could have been in an ad it was so clean. In fact, now I looked at him more closely, everything about him was kinda shiny: shiny clothes, shiny hair, shiny—well, you get the picture.

  “Yeah,” I said, hauling myself out of the bush and picking a leaf out of my ear.

  It wasn’t the snappiest comeback I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t really a comeback at all, if I’m being totally honest.

  The three shiny St. Mungo’s kids laughed. They had me pegged as a major St. Mungo’s loser and I hadn’t even got through the school gate. Even for Rafe Khatchadorian, this was a record.

  “Is that an American accent?” Captain Shiny Hair asked. He said “American” the way you might say “slug” or “cockroach.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. Again, you’ll notice, I didn’t have much in the way of snappy comebacks.

  “How awful,” Captain Shiny Hair said. “For you, I mean.”

  His two little cronies tittered.2

  “And if you’re thinking of actually attending St. Mungo’s dressed like that,” Captain Shiny Hair sneered, “you’ll need to do something about your appearance. We have standards at this school, you know.”

  My appearance? What did he mean? I was dressed more smart—Smartier? Smartlier?—than I’d ever been dressed in my life. Okay, I may have had half a bush sticking to my rear end and enough twigs in my hair to light a campfire, but still …

  “Five uniform demerits!” a voice behind me shouted, and I jumped about nine feet in the air.

  Captain Shiny Hair and his team moved toward the school, snickering (a bit like a titter but more snarky). I turned to see a teacher looking at me like I was a particularly nasty lump of dog dirt.

  “Report to the office immediately!” the teacher barked.

  I knew he was a teacher because:

  (A) he wore one of those jackets with leather patches on the elbows; and

  (B) he had a face that looked like a rat sucking a lemon.

  “Name?” he barked.

  “Rafe Khatchadorian?” I have no idea why I said it like I wasn’t sure myself. Put it down to nerves. In my defense, I was wearing a straw hat and short shorts (with tassels) in public. My concentration levels were at just about the lowest they’d ever been.

  The teacher had eyebrows so wild and bushy they reminded me of the garden at 322 Lorikeet Drive. He had a mustache to match. I half-expected to spot a rusting car buried in the hairy undergrowth on his top lip. “Ten language demerits!” he barked. “Failed to use ‘sir’ when addressing a member of staff!”

  Without another word, he turned and marched through the school gates, looking as though he wanted to invade a small country.

  I sagged and let o
ut a long sigh. It wasn’t even school time and I already wanted to go home.

  A big kid in a St. Mungo’s uniform walked past. He had a sad face and a shaggy head of bright red hair.

  “See you met The Winners Club,” he said. “And Mrs. Fitzpatrick.”

  “What?” I said, brushing dirt off my bare knees. I shook my head. Mrs. Fitzpatrick?

  “You’ll learn,” the big kid said, and lumbered off as the bell sounded for the start of my first day at St. Mungo’s.

  BY LUNCHTIME, I had been issued with nineteen more demerits. The only teacher who hadn’t given me one was the art teacher, Miss Bennett, who seemed almost human. Exactly what she was doing at St. Mungo’s I had no idea.

  In the non-Miss Bennett lessons, I collected nine uniform demerits.

  I got five more language demerits (all for insufficient “sirring”), three demerits for violations of something called “school spirit” (no, I had no clue either), and a demerit from a passing velociraptor who I later discovered to be Principal Winton, simply because he didn’t like the expression on my face. Which was kind of ironic because I didn’t like the expression on his face either. I also got a demerit for not shouting “elephant”—I’ll explain later.

  The only good thing about all of this was that I had absolutely no idea what a lousy demerit was. It didn’t sound good, but, for now, there didn’t seem to be any other consequences to my rule-breaking. I thought back to HVMS and my campaign to break every rule in the school book. If I tried that at St. Mungo’s, I’d be at it until I was sixty-five. Alongside all the usual stuff about phones and gum and bullying, there were rules about which side of the corridor you could walk on, what color sock tassels could be worn on the second Thursday in April, the correct way to eat soup, a ban on breathing through your mouth … you get the picture. There was even a weird one that involved yelling the word “elephant” if a teacher told the class to be quiet. I’m not kidding—the second lesson I was in, there was a bit too much chatter going on and the teacher said, “Quiet!” Immediately, everyone stood up and yelled “Elephant!” Then they sat down.

  I hadn’t moved because I’d figured everyone had gone nuts and I was checking the nearest exit.

  Which was why I got a demerit for not saying “elephant.”

  There was no way I was going to make it through the next two months.

  I WAS EXHAUSTED. Beat. Done. Pooped.

  Keeping hold of 322 Lorikeet Drive depended on me staying put at St. Mungo’s and, if this morning was anything to go by, I didn’t know if I had it in me.

  I trudged over to the school canteen, which looked pretty much like the dining hall at Hogwarts. I had no appetite, but if I was going to make it through the first day I needed to keep up my strength.

  I waited in line with my tray and took my lunch across to an empty seat in the middle of the enormous room. I noticed a few kids looking in my direction, but none of them seemed too friendly. The empty seat I’d spotted was next to the big red-headed kid with the sad face, who, so far, had been the only St. Mungo’s student besides Captain Shiny Hair to speak to me all morning. He glanced up as I walked over to him.

  “Okay if I sit here?” I asked.

  The big kid looked like he’d just been told he had two days to live. “Uh, yeah,” he said, after a pause. “I guess so.”

  I sat down miserably and wondered what to do with my stupid hat.

  Was there a rule about new kids having to wear straw hats at lunch or one forbidding new kids wearing straw hats to lunch? I looked around. Some kids had their hats on and some didn’t. I spotted The Velociraptor across the hall with Mrs. Fitzpatrick, her mustache stalking the edges of the room, waiting to pounce on anyone who so much as breathed out of place.

  “This place is complicated,” I said to Big Red. He probably had a name, but I was just going to call him Big Red from now on.

  Big Red nodded slowly and chewed his sandwich. He looked like an orangutan munching on bamboo, or whatever it is orangutans eat. He opened his mouth to say something and I waited for the words to come out.

  “Yeah,” he said, and took another chomp of his sandwich.

  It wasn’t exactly sparkling conversation, but it was the only thing on offer. I noticed Captain Shiny Hair staring at me and I asked Big Red about him.

  “Oh,” Big Red said. “Him.”

  I waited patiently. I was getting used to Big Red’s way of (not) speaking.

  “Cory Tamworth-Blythe,” Big Red said. He chewed his sandwich for about a month before speaking again. “His dad’s Henry Tamworth-Blythe. Rich. Gives money. A lot. To the school. Also …” Big Red took another bite. Chew. Wait. Chew. Wait. Chew. Wait.

  “Also?” I said encouragingly, in case Big Red took another bite and I lost the will to live.

  “Also an idiot.”

  I was just about to say something else when I heard The Velociraptor tell the room to be quiet.

  Not wanting to get another demerit, I jumped to my feet and yelled, “Elephant!”

  I realized something was wrong straight away. I’m smart like that.

  The entire dining room—a quick head count told me there were about, oh, 182,624 kids in total—stared at me, open-mouthed. Captain Shiny Hair was looking like Christmas had come early and I was his gift-wrapped present.

  If my time at St. Mungo’s had any chance of working out, I was pretty sure this little mistake just killed that stone-dead. I wasn’t just a weird new kid with a funny accent, I was the weird new kid with a funny accent who stood up and shouted “elephant.”

  Way worse.

  Or better, depending on who you were.

  I sat down and picked up my cheese sandwich.

  “Two demerits!” The Velociraptor yelled. “Inappropriate shouting of ‘elephant’!”

  “Oh boy,” Big Red muttered, and shuffled away from me, as though my dorkiness might be contagious.

  He was probably right.

  I’LL SKIP THE horror of the rest of Day One.

  The main item of info you need to know is, by the time lunch was over, my nickname was “Elephant Boy.”

  As soon as the bell sounded, I headed across the gigantic playing fields. I was making for the trees, which ringed the cricket pitch. (I’ll be coming back to cricket later.) This, Big Red had told me, was the back way out of school.

  The route took me past a small house with its own garden. I figured it belonged to the school caretaker—I’d seen a guy in green overalls driving around on a golf cart towing a trailer of gardening tools. He’d waved at me, so, by St. Mungo’s standards, the caretaker was my best friend.

  I rounded the corner and noticed a group of kids throwing something at the back of the house.

  It was Captain Shiny Hair aka Cory Tamworth-Blythe and his gang of toadies. The Winners Club (*gag*) had a box of eggs and were throwing them at the windows of the caretaker’s house.

  “Hey!” I yelled, without thinking.

  A little voice inside my head (no, not Leo) said, What do you think you’re doing? Hasn’t today been bad enough without getting stomped on as well?

  The voice was right, but it was too late. I got ready to be stomped.

  To my surprise, The Winners Club took one look at me and ran for the trees.

  I blinked.

  Maybe my massive haul of demerits had somehow catapulted me to instant “bad boy” status?

  “Yeah!” I yelled (although not too loudly in case they turned around and came back to pummel me; I didn’t have a plan for that). “You better run!”

  I jogged over to the box of eggs and shook my fist at their departing backs. I picked up the eggs and looked around for a garbage bin. The Khatchadorians may be many things but we’re no litterbugs.

  “Hey!” a voice said. “You!”

  I turned to see a girl about my age, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and the exact same expression as an MMA fighter about to enter the cage. She had come out of the caretaker’s house and was heading my way fast.
/>   I looked down at the egg carton and back at the house that was covered in eggs. The Winners Club had disappeared.

  “Ah,” I said, holding up a finger. “Okay, I see what you’re thinking, but there’s an explanation for all this. You see—”

  That was as far as I got because the girl did two things at what seemed to be super-ninja speed. First, she grabbed an egg and cracked it over my head. Then she kicked me in the shin.

  “Ow! Hey!” I yelped, hopping on the spot and trying to see through the film of egg white that now covered my face.

  The girl cracked another egg and kicked me in the other shin.

  “I didn’t throw any—Ow!”

  She repeated her egg-cracking, shin-kicking routine. It was one she was clearly happy with because she was sticking to it. Crack, kick, repeat. Crack, kick, repeat.

  I hopped away, still trying to explain that it wasn’t me who’d been throwing the eggs while she just kept right on cracking and kicking, kicking and cracking. She was good at it too. Accurate.

  Eventually, just as I was running out of unbruised shin, I turned tail and sprinted for the trees. To my relief, she didn’t keep up the chase.

  With egg on my face—literally—and with my shins throbbing like a Japanese nuclear power station, I limped painfully back to East Fudge. The jackhammers on the freeway were still hard at work. Even though it was winter, it was a warm day. The concrete dust drifted down onto the slowly cooking egg. By the time I reached the front door and staggered inside, I looked like a cement-coated omelet.

  “How was your day at St. Mun—?” Mom put her hand to her mouth. I must have looked bad because even Georgia didn’t say anything funny.

  “Put it this way,” I said, scooping a handful of cooked egg off my nose, “I’ve gone right off elephants.”

  IT TOOK ALL my powers of persuasion to stop Mom from IMMEDIATELY heading to St. Mungo’s and getting the egg-cracking, shin-kicking girl arrested.